Why is it so hard to make close friends in this game? lol

[Alegis]

Tbh you cant find real friends from there either, real friends are made when you are a child. Childhood friends will last untill you rollover and die, others will just come and go.

It might be harder to find friends than it was in childhood, but to say that you cant find any anymore, is bullshit.
My closest friends i found as i started to work, while those of my Childhood are long gone.

[Parodine]

I'm in an FC with a lot of the core people I played FFXI with, so that's probably the main reason I have my network. Cause the linkshells I joined never really panned out in terms of socialization.

In FFXI though if you didn't have a core group of people to rely on every now and then, it was hard to get a lot of things done, so you relying more on people helping each other here and there. It's organized more casually in FFXIV (not necessarily bad, especially for my limited free time) so you have less things you need that closeness for...so people find it easier to not bother.

[Set-Abominae]

I have been very close to an FC that felt like family, but we've been disbanded cuz the fc was not prospering well.

What exactly is "not prospering well"? I run a small FC, no more than 10 active members usually 4 or so at a time, we make enough points to use meat and mead II 3 or 4 times a week for raiding. Was the leader expecting people to hand over millions in gil for fees or whatever or just wanted unlimited points to leech xp buffs or something? Thats no reason to break up an FC as close as mine is and what you say yours was.

[AsahinaMyLove]

haha,funny.
...and Im a person that avoid any friendship in online games and sozialnetworks ;p

[KayoZ]

I usually join small FCs for that reason.

Same here, I dont do well in large guilds. Much as in RL, too many people and its a complete social shut down for me. Best guilds ive been in have had a max of 15-20 active members. Hell ive had more fun in guilds with as low as 3 members who cant even get very much end game done, over larger 50+ guilds.

[Laerune]

My advice would be, to log off and try to find friends in real life. Join a club like kick boxing or fitness group, you will find people fast this way. I met 3 people via my weekly kick boxing training and they all are playing FFXIV with me right now. I now have +3 friends in real life and ingame. This can also be the same for you, spread your wings and find friends outside.

Real friends in a mmorpg is very rare and even when you find one, the next new mmorpg might split you two apart.

[Nikita]

Maybe stop trying so hard. I dunno. Maybe I'm weird but I make friends without trying. Maybe try talking to random people, I do that all the time when I'm bored. I don't think instancing has anything to do with it. I have friends from FFXI, Aion, TERA, FFXIV, even WoW that I talk to all the time on Facebook and Skype.

As for my "real" social life, making new gamer friends is pretty easy. I don't even bother going on a date with a guy unless he's a gamer.

[raela]

I've been online gaming for about 12 years now and my online friends have way outlasted my IRL ones. Could be a personality quirk of mine, though. Most do end up "game-specific" - you need to mesh well and have a reason to have contact outside of the game, IMO. The mmo I was playing before this went to utter crap, but a small group of us that played it (and well, another before it) now all keep in touch via a WhatsApp chat.

I agree with small to medium sized groups though - I really fail to see the appeal of the large FCs (how do you even learn basic things like which role people prefer when it's a group of 100+??? How can a leader keep track of drama?) Though I also think he group of people you socialize with in game might not have to be the people you progress with - someone can be a good friend but a terrible player.

[Sensual]

400h gametime, friend list still empty ;_;
/cry

[Failia]

It can be difficult to get close with a group of people initially in-game, for the reasons that others have mentioned already.

I'm lucky with the FC that I was inducted into in October. We chat all the time in teamspeak, do things together OTHER than just FF14 and we're just wrapping up PAX with 13 of us being here together, with me never meeting any of them IRL before. And we had a BLAST. And we're a relatively small FC so we can build some lasting relationships together.

You just need to find that good group of people that you can do things together with. I can likely guess which FC you're on Behemoth. Nothing against them, but you've already mentioned one of the problems with them.